How Do I Build a Complete Purchase List for a 500-Candle Order Including Wax, Fragrance, Jars, Wicks, Wick Stickers, Lids, Labels, Boxes and Production Buffer?

Set the basis before you price a single line

The first is visible: you are 140 candles in and the wick stickers ran out at unit 400, because you bought ten sheets of forty. The second is invisible. You quoted ₹350 a candle against ₹254.01 of CSI materials, then the printer invoiced 540 labels, the box maker 524 boxes, and the carton and tape bill followed. The ₹95.99 that looked like margin was already spent.

A purchase list is arithmetic, and arithmetic needs a stated basis. Four inputs, written down before anything is priced.

The bill of materials, line by line

In production order, because that is the order a shortage bites in. CSI live pricing, September 2026; the linked product page is authoritative.

1 · Wax — 72.312 kg calculated, 75 kg bought

524 × 138 g = 72.312 kg, plus transfer loss — wax left in the pitcher, on the thermometer, in the melter dregs. CSI publishes no wastage figure; the buffer section has the method for measuring your own. As an illustration only, 3% makes it 74.481 kg. Round up into packs that exist — the ladder is 500 g, 1 kg, 5 kg and 10 kg, and there is no 25 kg carton of anything. At CSI 464's ₹5,074.00 per 10 kg and ₹507.40 per 1 kg, 7 × 10 kg + 5 × 1 kg = 75 kg for ₹38,055.00, leaving 518.6 g over — about ₹263 of stock rather than waste.

2 · Fragrance oil — 6.288 kg calculated, 6.5 kg bought

524 × 12 g = 6.288 kg; the same 3% takes it to 6,476.64 g. Nothing larger than a 1 kg bottle exists anywhere in the 92-oil range — no 2 kg, no 5 kg, no drum — so the arithmetic runs in 1 kg and 500 g units. Sandalwood Fragrance Oil is ₹5,026.80 per kilogram and ₹2,513.40 per 500 g: 6 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g = 6.5 kg for ₹32,674.20.

Deliberately not seven kilograms. Sandalwood's 500 g is the same ₹5.0268 per gram as its kilogram, so a seventh would cost ₹35,187.60 — ₹2,513.40 more for oil you have no plan for. Across CSI oils the kilogram-versus-two-500 g saving runs from nothing to about 6.7%; on Sandalwood and Woody Oud it is exactly ₹0.00.

3 · Dye — your figure, not a lookup

If the candle is coloured, dye is a line — the one line where CSI publishes no load guidance at all: no drops per kilogram, no percentage, no shade chart with quantities. The quantity comes from your own recipe, tested on the wax you use. Candle Dye Liquid Purple is ₹236.00/15 g, ₹472.00/50 g and ₹900.00/100 g, and every shade in the dye collection starts at ₹236.00. This list carries one 100 g bottle at ₹900.00; if you do not know your dose, establish it on a 1 kg test melt before the production order.

4 · Jars — 524 needed, 530 bought, lid included

Glass is the only line that arrives broken and the largest on the sheet, so the spare allowance has to be argued rather than assumed. Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid (150 g) ships in a pack of 10 at ₹944.00 and a pack of 20 at ₹1,888.00 — ₹94.40 each either way, so mixing packs costs nothing: 26 × 20 + 1 × 10 = 530 jars for ₹50,032.00, six spare. The lid is part of the product, inside that ₹94.40, so there is no lid line to price — which matters, because CSI sells no standalone lids at all. Choose a jar whose title names none, such as the matte glass jars at ₹70.80 each, and the lid moves into the gap section.

And pack sizes vary by jar — there is no universal carton of 24. Across the store's eighty containers the packs in use are 1, 5, 6, 10, 12, 20, 50 and 100: the Black Glass Jar with Black Lid (150 g) is 10 and 20 at ₹107.00 each, the 200 ml Salsa Glass Jar is 5, 50 and 100 at ₹29.50 each in the larger two. Check the listing before you build the quantity.

5 · Wicks — 524 needed, 550 bought, spares almost free

The cheapest insurance here, because Eco Candle Wicks Thin (C1) are flat at ₹5.90 per wick at every pack size from 10 to 1,000 — ₹59.00/10, ₹295.00/50, ₹590.00/100, ₹2,950.00/500, ₹5,900.00/1,000. The per-unit price never moves, so there is no reason to be tight: 500 + 50 = 550 wicks for ₹3,245.00. A spare wick costs ₹5.90 and a spare 150 g jar ₹94.40 — sixteen times as much. Thick (C2) is likewise flat, at ₹9.44. Wick size is a separate decision, and CSI publishes no sizing chart, so it comes from your own test burns — the guide by jar diameter has the method.

6 · Wick stickers — 524 needed, 560 bought

One per wick, plus the ones that land crooked. Candle Wick Stickers come as a sheet of 40 at ₹100.00 (₹2.50 each): 14 sheets = 560 for ₹1,400.00. The classic mid-run shortage, because thirteen sheets is 520 — four short of 524. For wider tabs, Large Candle Wick Stickers are ₹249.00 for 40.

7 · Care stickers — and the smaller pack is one short

Candle Care Stickers Roll is ₹413.00 per 500 (1 inch, ₹0.83 each) or ₹699.00 per 1,000 (1.5 inch, ₹0.70 each). The arithmetic decides: 500 is short of 524, so the small roll means two at ₹826.00 — ₹127.00 more than the thousand-roll for the same thousand stickers. Take the 1,000 at ₹699.00.

8 · Tools — one-off, not per candle

Capital items, bought once, which must not be smeared across one order: Pen Thermometer ₹354.00, Candle Making Weighing Scale ₹354.00, Steel Pouring Pitcher 600 ml ₹708.00, Bamboo Stirring Sticks ₹1,062.00 for 50 — ₹2,478.00 together, ₹4.96 a unit across 500 candles and ₹0.00 on the next order.

The six lines CSI does not supply

We have checked the whole catalogue. CandleMakingSuppliesIndia sells no standalone lids, no retail or gift boxes, no shipping cartons, no printed labels, no box inserts, no bubble wrap, no cushioning material and no packing tape. Not one. So the honest move is to name every line the order needs, price the ones we supply, and mark the rest as yours to cost.

Two properties of those lines surprise a first-timer. Printed labels and boxes almost always carry a minimum order quantity and an overage allowance, and both belong to your printer, not to us: a printer who will not run fewer than 1,000 labels has made your 524-unit job a 1,000-label purchase, and a press delivering plus-or-minus 5% has made your quantity approximate. Ask before you commit — it can move the per-candle cost by more than the fragrance does.

The second is lead time. Printed items are usually the longest line on the schedule; wax and glass tend to be quicker. CSI publishes no dispatch or delivery time and this page will not invent one: message us on WhatsApp at +91 7397976926 to confirm the current lead time on the CSI lines, and confirm each non-CSI line with its own supplier.

The units nobody counts, and the buffer per material

A 500-candle order is not a 500-candle purchase. Three categories of fully-costed candles sit outside the client's count, and each needs a jar, a wick, a sticker and its share of wax and oil.

500 + 6 + 6 + 12 = 524 candles to pour — a 4.8% uplift on every per-candle line. Twenty-four extra jars is ₹2,265.60, 24 extra wicks ₹141.60, 24 wick stickers ₹60.00, and 24 × 138 g is 3.312 kg of extra wax with 288 g of extra oil. None of it optional, all of it invisible on a list that says "500".

Why a flat percentage across every line is the wrong model

The usual advice is to add ten percent to everything, and it is wrong in both directions at once. Glass breaks and wax does not — wax left in the pitcher is recoverable, a chipped rim is gone. Wicks are nearly free and jars are not: a 10% wick buffer is 52 spare wicks at ₹306.80, a 10% jar buffer 52 jars at ₹4,908.80 and may be four times more glass than you break. And printed labels carry a supplier minimum you do not control.

Applied here: wax, 3% on 72.312 kg gives 74.481 kg, bought as 75 kg; oil the same, bought as 6.5 kg; jars six spare, deliberately modest, because at a counted 2% reject rate you need 535 and the line steps to 540 at ₹50,976.00, ₹944.00 more; wicks 26 spare at ₹153.40; wick stickers 36 spare at ₹90.00; care stickers 476 spare the pack size gave you free. Five percentages, because five materials fail in five different ways.

The purchase list and the pre-production check

Everything above on one sheet. CSI lines carry prices; non-CSI lines carry blanks, because inventing a figure would be worse than leaving the blank visible.

The arithmetic that tells you to decline the order

Say the client has offered ₹350 a candle — their figure, not ours. CSI materials are ₹254.01, leaving ₹95.99 for two printed labels, a box, an insert, a share of a carton, cushioning, tape, labour on 524 pours, electricity, courier and margin. On most specifications that does not close. A maker who builds this list properly will sometimes find the order is not worth taking at the price quoted — and finding that out on a spreadsheet costs nothing, while finding it out after delivery costs the whole job. We would rather you priced it correctly and walked away than bought 75 kg of our wax and lost money on it. The pricing guide runs the same arithmetic backwards from the selling price.

The pre-production check — tick it against stock on the bench

Tick each line against the physical stock on the bench the day before the first pour, not against an invoice. The order below is the order production consumes them in, so a shortage surfaces a day early instead of mid-run.

Frequently asked questions